


A Knight & His Princess

by QueenofStarlight



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2018-11-07
Packaged: 2019-08-20 07:16:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16551374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenofStarlight/pseuds/QueenofStarlight
Summary: Keith dresses up as a princess for Halloween because his best friend Lance can't be a knight without one.





	A Knight & His Princess

**Author's Note:**

> inspired by this art by gesu-ko: http://gesu-ko.tumblr.com/post/179614653849/happy-halloween-dont-eat-too-much-candy-kids

“Shiro I need a dress!”

Of all the things Takashi Shirogane had expected to come out of his 8-year-old little brother’s mouth when he came charging in after school looking pissed to all hell, that was not it.

“A dress.” He blanks, not quite sure what to say.

“Yeah. A pink one.” Keith reiterates. 

“Why on this good earth do you need a pink dress?”

“It’s Halloween!” 

“Yes, I know. Why do you need a pink dress?”

Now that he’s said it a couple of times over, Shiro can see Keith’s cheeks growing red; whether in embarrassment or frustration he might never know. His brother fidgets a little, playing with the straps of his too-big backpack and suddenly avoiding eye contact like Shiro’s a Gorgon from one of the fable books Keith brought home from the library (and still hasn’t taken back, he might add).

Some time passes and Shiro closes the book he’d been reading, setting it down on the table.

“Hey, I’m not trying to say wanting a pink dress is weird. It’s not. I’m just curious why, because you’ve never asked for a dress before in your life.” He explains.

Keith nods, finally meeting Shiro’s gaze again.

“Everybody wore their Halloween costumes to school today, ‘cept me ‘cause no one told me we were s’posed to. And Lance dressed up as a knight but none of the girls in our class dressed up as princess and he cried ‘cause a knight can’t have a story without a princess in it.”

Shiro nods in understanding. “So you wanna dress up as a princess to trick or treat with him?”

“Yeah.”

“Why does it have to be pink, if I may ask?”

“Princesses always wear pink, duh!”

Shiro doesn’t bother trying to tell Keith that the only princess he even knows of that wears pink is Aurora, and she only wears the pink dress for about two minutes of her entire film. He just goes with the flow and stands up, ruffling Keith’s hair and earning himself an annoyed screech.

“C’mon then, kiddo. Let’s go get you a pink dress.”

 

They end up at the Goodwill three streets down from their house, sifting through the little girls’ clothes and most likely gaining a lot of strange looks from other shoppers, not that Shiro would ever give two shits about anyone who gets mad if boys wear anything even remotely feminine.

“How about this one?” He asks, pulling a fuschia dress with puffy sleeves and sequins off the rack and holding it out to Keith. “Too pink?”

“A little.” Keith answers.

Shiro puts the dress back on the rack and continues onward, skipping over a worn-looking Elsa dress and a couple of others that aren’t the right color. Keith rejects a couple more dresses, one being clearly too long for “speed-walking-ability” and another being too scratchy of fabric, still another being, quote, “too much like the one the dumb witch wears in the dumb witch movie.”

Shiro is pretty sure he means Hocus Pocus, in which case, rude, but he just laughs to himself.

The last dress on the rack that will be even close to fitting Keith is a blinding lime green, so Shiro leaves it alone and turns to his brother with a hopeful expression. “If you want, we can go to the Holts and ask if Katie has any dresses that would work. Dunno if she’d wanna share, though.”

Keith looks more than a little bit disappointed, and Shiro takes his brother’s hand in his, leading him through the overcrowded aisles toward the exit. They’re halfway there when chaos hits.

The first sign of a tantrum is a piercing shriek that cuts through the store, reminding Shiro of the last time he babysat Keith and Katie Holt at the same time and the two of them had fought over control of a pop-up book about airplanes. Keith holds his hands over his ears and scowls, and Shiro turns to the changing rooms, where an exasperated mother is dragging her daughter out of one of the rooms, the daughter in question about Keith’s age and kicking up a storm.

Among the indecipherable screams and straight up shrieking, Shiro determines the little girl is pissed about not getting something, and luckily, her mom seems done enough with the world to not actually give a fuck and it looks like she won’t be giving into the tantrum anytime soon.

The girl and her mother disappear out the front exit, taking the racket with them, and everyone else in the store returns about their business as if nothing had happened. Typical. 

Shiro looks down and discovers Keith has disappeared as well, and a mild panic sets in. 

“Keith? Keith!” He shouts, trying to spot his brother over the racks of clothes. “Where are you?”

“Shiro, look!”

Turning on his heel, Shiro sees Keith standing over by the dressing rooms, now wearing a baby pink summer dress with spaghetti straps pulled hastily on over his white shirt and jeans. Shiro breathes a sigh of relief and heads over to his brother, chuckling to himself when he finds the kid smiling from ear to ear like it’s Christmas day. Who knew this was all it would take?

“Is that the one?” He asks, straightening the dress on Keith’s form.

“Yeah! It’s not itchy!”

 

“And it’s not too pink?” 

“Nope!”

“Well then,” Shiro says, sneakily checking the price tag. “Let’s go check out, shall we?”

 

The look on Lance McClain’s face when Shiro opens the door and reveals Keith in his princess dress and last-minute paper crown is absolutely priceless, and Shiro wishes he’d recorded it.

He chats with Lance’s sister Melissa while the two boys practically yell at each other about how awesome their respective costumes are, then yell about it to Lance’s other siblings, who all yell back until Melissa snaps at them all to act like civilized human beings, a plea that actually works.

He waves to his brother as the group huddles off and Keith waves back, nearly smacking himself in the face with his pumpkin bucket in the process, which has Shiro giggling and Keith scowling. 

 

Three hours later, when Shiro knows Keith is already at the McClain house for their Halloween sleepover, he gets a text from Melissa. All the message contains is a photo of Keith and Lance passed out on the floor, chocolate smeared across their faces, still holding hands.

God, he loves his brother.

**Author's Note:**

> THIS IS THE FLUFFIEST THING I HAVE EVER WRITTEN IN MY LIFE JUST SO YOU KNOW


End file.
